August 4, 2016

But I also have to admit that when you’re the father of two daughters, you become even more aware of how gender stereotypes pervade our society. You see the subtle and not-so-subtle social cues transmitted through culture. You feel the enormous pressure girls are under to look and behave and even think a certain way.

And those same stereotypes affected my own consciousness as a young man. Growing up without a dad, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out who I was, how the world perceived me, and what kind of man I wanted to be. It’s easy to absorb all kinds of messages from society about masculinity and come to believe that there’s a right way and a wrong way to be a man. But as I got older, I realized that my ideas about being a tough guy or cool guy just weren’t me. They were a manifestation of my youth and insecurity. Life became a lot easier when I simply started being myself.

So we need to break through these limitations. We need to keep changing the attitude that raises our girls to be demure and our boys to be assertive, that criticizes our daughters for speaking out and our sons for shedding a tear. We need to keep changing the attitude that punishes women for their sexuality and rewards men for theirs....

109 comments:

In any event, Nancy's is a fun place on the marina in Oak Bluffs where the Tank gang always go for our first lobster roll and Corona upon arrival at MV. Yes, even we poor folk can go to MV (well, if you have the $6K/wk for the house).

Apart from his narcissism (which is pretty much an occupational hazard for politicians), Obama is a very agreeable guy, including his attitude toward women. It's his policies and his willful disregard of constitutional limitations on his office that are objectionable.

With the importance of the female vote to the Democrats right now, an interview in Glamour is about one of the most useful things Obama can do for HRC to shore up her vote.

I agree with Insty that if the Republicans want to broaden their base they should start & fund a woman's magazine. It probably wouldn't flail around any worse than some of their other outreach efforts.

"But as I got older, I realized that my ideas about being a tough guy or cool guy just weren’t me. They were a manifestation of my youth and insecurity. Life became a lot easier when I simply started being myself."

Not the cool guy? That's how he won.

Yeah, not the tough guy. Rolled by the JV and Iran. Iran took his lunch money and he won't admit it.

One more thing. Props to my mother, who raised me to be a female that didn't care much what the other females thought. All those times she had a fit because I wanted to conform in some way - that lecture I heard so many times: "If Suzy jumped in the lake would you do that too?"

I hated hearing that when I was young but damn am I glad she trotted that phrase out so many times. THAT is how you create independent thinking women: the Suzy Jumping in the Lake Technique.

The attitude that punishes women for their sexuality and rewards men for theirs" Wait, what? How are women "punished" for their sexuality? And where's my reward?

From the article:

We need to keep changing the attitude that punishes women for their sexuality and rewards men for theirs....

Now, chill there, good buddy. In Obama's defense, he didn't say men punish women for their sexuality. He slyly left that to the reader's imagination. But, you know he's thinking what every guy thinks: it's women who punish other women for their sexuality.

You want an example of Jesuitical moral hairsplitting on the disputed question of slut-shaming among women? Take a gander at this article (link kinda NSFW).

You know, that young lady working a regular job for the summer rather than doing a pretentious internship or--face it--mandatory "volunteering" sets a good example. Teenagers learn about work and learn to make a real contribution doing jobs like this, and horrors, they get paid for it! They also get a better appreciation of adults who pay the rent doing real jobs.

And those same stereotypes affected my own consciousness as a young man. Growing up without a dad, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out who I was, how the world perceived me, and what kind of man I wanted to be.

How he wanted to continue if Michelle would let him: "And look what a feckless pussy I turned out to be. Boys, take my advice and follow the stereotypes. They're time-tested and they've survived for a reason."

@YH: "In Obama's defense, he didn't say men punish women for their sexuality." Nor did I! Still, it would be fun to hear O say: "I have lived with so many women for so long, that I know it's time for women to stop slut-shaming each other."

I tried to raise my girls (like my boys) to be accountable for their own actions and not hold back when presented with obstacles. No excuses and no whining. By and large that's how they are.

Obama's girls are among the most privileged people on the planet. Unfortunately they also are likely to be targets for vengeful terrorists for a long long time. They truly deserve our sympathy for that, but not much else.

Good for Sasha and the job. Not too taxing but she will learn something. Was this her idea or someone else's? We will never know. And it's got to be great advertising for Nancy's. They should give her a great big bonus for the publicity value.

Great, not a word about young Black's, men and women, who try to excel in school being accused of being an Oreo.By they way, while I was growing up I don't think I ever thought how I was going to be a Man. I also don't remember any of my friends fretting over such thoughts either.

I have no problem with the I's, me's, and my's in a piece that was designed to have Obama talk about his thoughts and opinions. It may not be the smoothest style ["Any sentence you start with 'I think' or 'I believe' should have the first two words struck," is common persuasive writing 101,], but it's not wrong.

Obama says all the right things with all the right words. There's no need to send him to the re-education camp. It's impossible for a public figure to openly discuss sexuality and gender roles without fudging and flossing, but he does it gracefully and effortlessly. It helps a lot that to all appearances he's a good family man.......I don't think it's the kind of nterview Trump can do. Bill Clinton could do it, but the gag factor would subvert the beauty of his thoughts.

Ignorance is Bliss said...So I’d like to think that I’ve been pretty aware of the unique challenges women face...Which, oddly enough, are a lot like the unique challenges men face but with vaginas, poor upper body strength, and a propensity to whine.

As the father of two boys, I think about how the whole education system, K through college, has become an increasingly hostile place for boys and men. I think about how the energetic and adventurous nature of boys is punished by a feminine and feminized teacher corps that wishes that little boys could just act like good little girls - and they're willing to administer as much Ritalin as is necessary to achieve that goal.

I think about college campuses where "regret" = "rape" and how Obama's Department of Education and its "Dear Colleague Letters" have made that happen.

I think about my older son who currently wants to be a Marine and then a Policeman - and whether I should advice him against that thanks to the current debasement of the armed forces (including admitting women to the Infantry and other non-appropriate roles) and constant demonization of the Police via BLM and similar. Also by this horrific caricature of a President.

Hey, Barack. How about the unique challenges faced by the one million plus Muslims who have emigrated to Europe because of your failed policies in the Mideast? Or the 400,000 plus killed in Syria? It is a big challenge being dead. Equally challenging for women and men, boys and girls.

So we need to break through these limitations. We need to keep changing the attitude that raises our girls to be demure and our boys to be assertive, that criticizes our daughters for speaking out and our sons for shedding a tear. We need to keep changing the attitude that punishes women for their sexuality and rewards men for theirs....

This assertion is laughably retrograde. No one raises girls to be demure anymore--I mean come on. Slut Walks? Etc? Everyone is encouraging all young people to speak out too much, if anything. Young people are being told their ideas are So Precious and So Important instead of what they need to hear, which is shut up and learn something from people who've been doing life longer than they have. Who punishes women for their sexuality? Who rewards men for same? University kangaroo courts? Where does this guy get his information?!

"as I got older, I realized that my ideas about being a tough guy or cool guy just weren’t me. They were a manifestation of my youth and insecurity. Life became a lot easier when I simply started being myself."

Hey O, get on the couch over here.

OK, so your ideas about being tough and cool weren't "me." So why did you make such a big deal about being tough and cool while running for and being Prez?

If they were a manifestation of youth and insecurity then, what are they now?

You say life became easier. Was it that hard before?

So you started being yourself. When exactly was that? For example, were you already "yourself" when you fabricated your autobiography? When you attended Rev. Wright's church all those years? Before you threw him under the bus or after? (Tough guy!)

You say I, me, my a lot. Why is that?

Do you think you are being yourself now? Does being yourself involve telling stories about yourself? Dig a little deeper. Which of these stories are true and which are BS? How can we tell? How can you tell? Can you tell? Do you want to tell?

Suppose someone said you are the consummate BS artist, spouting BS always and everywhere about everything, in a purely calculating way to aggrandize yourself and your political project. Do you see that as part of "being yourself"?

"You feel the enormous pressure girls are under to look and behave and even think a certain way."

I'm a father of both flavors. This is true. Girls are far more intensely influenced by their peer group than boys. Boys are from the beginning more independent and willing to buck, or ignore, the system.

Its most certainly true that girls dress, believe and behave mostly as their female friends and competitors do, not as men require them. Male desires in these matters are of marginal interest. At best. Or at least that seems to be the way of it among high status young women. It seems that this is always the way it was.

"as I got older, I realized that my ideas about being a tough guy or cool guy just weren’t me. They were a manifestation of my youth and insecurity. Life became a lot easier when I simply started being myself."

Kind of sounds like O had a moment when some guy told him to shut the fuck up or I will beat your ass.

He decided then and there to give up the idea of being tough or cool. Of course, I am talking about grade school, middle, or high school physicalprowess, not mental toughness. Iexpect O was one of the "if I was there, I woulda..." guys, until he was "there", and he didn't do anything.

"As the father of two boys, I think about how the whole education system, K through college, has become an increasingly hostile place for boys and men."

If I had enough time and capital, I would create The Adventure School for Boys to let them learn in hands-on environments where their excess energy wasn't suppressed by the false choice of "behaving" but rather channeled into productive pursuits.

If I had enough time and capital, I would create The Adventure School for Boys to let them learn in hands-on environments where their excess energy wasn't suppressed by the false choice of "behaving" but rather channeled into productive pursuits.

The 'playing fields of Eton' were more than just fun sport. It was assumed that boys had more natural energy than would be consumed in class. I often wonder if kids today get off their X-box games and phones long enough to get some exercise. When I was a kid we all played outdoors until it was dark and Mother called us in.

EMD said... "As the father of two boys, I think about how the whole education system, K through college, has become an increasingly hostile place for boys and men."

If I had enough time and capital, I would create The Adventure School for Boys to let them learn in hands-on environments where their excess energy wasn't suppressed by the false choice of "behaving" but rather channeled into productive pursuits.

Of course, I would probably be demonized for such a thing.

8/4/16, 2:32 PM

In all likelihood, such an endeavor would result in an environment in which boys could/would thrive. As they did and it resulted in a place where boys excelled, where they received a top shelf education and schooling in the ways of being a proper man and adult, it would catch the attention of the ladies. They would first ask and then demand that the girls be let in because it was such a unique experience that girls should not be excluded from it. All the while claiming that letting in girls would not ever, never change the experience or environment for the boys. As the girls were admitted (under pressure from the government), the girls would likely complain that it was not hospitable to girls and some of the rules need to be changed. Some of the actives curtailed or watered down and some other "adjustments" or "reasonable accommodations" made. Eventually the place would be awash with "studies" classes and liberal arts instructors and just like every other place of learning for "equality" with the boys once again disenfranchised for "equality".

We need to keep changing the attitude that raises our girls to be demure and our boys to be assertive, that criticizes our daughters for speaking out and our sons for shedding a tear.

My grandmother was born just after WW1. She is neither demure nor weepy. She didn't raise any of her children (4 sons, 9 daughters) to be weepy or demure. And none of her grandchildren or great-grandchildren are being raised that way.

The President and his cultural allies are using the (non-)issue to whip the base.

Sasha makes few bucks and learns a little responsibility and the taxpayers pay how much? Couldn't they find a job for her in the White House? I remember when Chelsea went away to school and the taxpayers paid to have Chelsea's dorm building bomb hardened--walls reinforced, bulletproof glass--at some enormous cost. Then Chelsea lit up a blunt to break the ice with her new roommate.

Weepy and demure? Gimme a break! Young girls today are growing up in a culture where it's normal to send selfie-porn and give blow jobs.

My pioneer ancestors, male and female, were physically tough and strong in character. The southern belle persona is an affectation that probably worked well in the antebellum south but doesn't play well today. Nor did it in the 17th century. Only in the prissy Victorian era did women get put on a pedestal and treated like Dresden china. Men and women should be partners, not adversaries, in whatever culture they find themselves. There are basic differences, aside from the obvious physical ones. For one, women need to be loved. Men need to be admired. I'm still trying to preach this truth to my daughters. ;-)

Darrell said...Sasha makes few bucks and learns a little responsibility and the taxpayers pay how much? Couldn't they find a job for her in the White House?

They could find her a job in the WH but you would criticize that too. It's no win for Sasha if you factor in the Secret Service cost (which of course will be incurred even if she sits by the pool instead of going to work.) An American President's child is always in danger. What better target for the vengeful terrorist, among other assailants. The security detail is part of the price of government these days. The kid has a job. She's 15. Good for her.

Young people should have less sex. At least with less varied partners. I've spent the last week and a half on a college campus. There is way too much signage/flyerage about sex all over campus. Most of it is about considering whether not you really feel comfortable and how to communicate. It's weird. Very elementary schoolish. If you need a lot of childlike guidance and lists of rules to have sex, you are not ready or you are not in a relationship wherein sex should exist. Why should we be positive and encouraging of young, uncommitted people having promiscuous sex? These are people with no good options for dealing with the possible consequences. The mixed approach, that you're obviously ready and yet have no idea what you are doing and need our instruction, is very strange.

Fine essay but it seems his view of things is a bit out of date. If he'd only had a son his perspective might be more balanced. Good for his younger daughter to be working this summer. Always good when teenagers can work

I was on another campus last year, and there were messages about sexual assault everywhere. Surreal. If there are so many rapes that that much signage is warranted, there shouldn't be signs because the school should be closed down and law enforcement should be doing a special investigation.

"...I’ve been pretty aware of the unique challenges women face—it’s what has shaped my own feminism."

What does, "So I’d like to think that..." really add? He could have said, "I hope that..." and it would have been more clear and the meaning would presumably be the same. Even as it muddles the part where he claims it shaped his own feminism. That first clause makes it seem possible that his feminism is based on possibly erronious ideas about the hardships faced by women.

Freeman Hunt said... Young people should have less sex. At least with less varied partners. I've spent the last week and a half on a college campus. There is way too much signage/flyerage about sex all over campus. Most of it is about considering whether not you really feel comfortable and how to communicate. It's weird. Very elementary schoolish. If you need a lot of childlike guidance and lists of rules to have sex, you are not ready or you are not in a relationship wherein sex should exist. ... very strange.

8/4/16, 3:26 PM

Indeed, I too find it very strange. I get the impression that elementary and high school students are treated like they are more adult about sex than collage girls/kids, not that I am in favor of that, it is just the impression I have.

In elementary and high school they have sex explained ad nauseam, to include the mired variations, are show a number of birth control methods to include how to put on condoms. They used to hand them out in the halls.

Has all of that changed? They sure as heck are not teaching abstinence. That is one of those taboo subjects.

What the hell happens to these girls when the go to college? Suddenly all the girls turn into wilting violets and all the boys turn all rapy (or at least that is how the colleges act).

"Young people should have less sex. At least with less varied partners. I've spent the last week and a half on a college campus. There is way too much signage/flyerage about sex all over campus. Most of it is about considering whether not you really feel comfortable and how to communicate. It's weird. "

Whats extremely weird is why colleges care. The whole in loco parentis is a strange concept that leads to a host of idiocies.

These are adults. They should be assumed to be independent actors, customers of the institution, no less so than the patrons of a tavern. That is the European point of view and one of those that deserves consideration vs the American parochialism. The US does still have much to learn from abroad, usually in those areas that conflict with the interests of the Democratic party.

If they live off the largess of their parents, and misbehave, so be it, they are playing the part of the student prince (ref "The Student Prince" Sigmund Romberg). Princes should learn to look after themselves too.

If they want to take up extra-curricular activities like saber-dueling, ditto. This is not the concern of their professors.

How and where they live should be their own look-out. If they want to form a "republica" (old Spanish term for student-shared-rental situations) then they should, and they should settle all these things themselves.

Imagine if you opened a hotel in which 1 in 5 (a faulty statistic, but one the left believes) of your female patrons were sexually assaulted. You'd be closed down or harassed out of business in no time.

Why are we not shuttering the doors of these higher learning dens of iniquity in the name of justice?

I just moved into a bungalow in boring and safe Kenosha, WI. The 12-yr-old girl next door has twice approached me looking for jobs to earn some pocket money. I found garden work for her to do--stacking firewood, raking brush and such, and paid her minimum wage. She's very happy and said, "you're the best boss I've had."

Problem is, her dad came over to ask me not to employ her without walking next door to ask specific parental permission and to employ her only outside the house. That tends to waste my time and I had wanted her to clean windows and do general housework, seeing that you can't very well employ a pre-teen to use mowers, chainsaws, snowblowers, edgers or other dangerous outdoor tools.

When I was 10-years old, I took my Radio Flyer door-to-door on Chicago's South Side selling Christmas cards on straight commission, much as my Irish father had done before me in 1912. Within two years, I had started hiring other boys to go door-to-door for me. That experience served me for a lifetime of sales and public relations work as youth minister, coffeehouse manager, European tour guide and physics instructor in Germany, among other pursuits.

Sadly, our Amerikan culture makes it impossibly difficult for a young woman to enjoy the little freedom her male peers have, surely impeding her development and limiting her life possibilities; I have now come to believe that child rearing should never be entrusted to parents.

Such rules, both parental and governmental, surely disadvantage Amerikan youth and insult me besides. Why should I not have the right to an independent relationship with a kid for whose (mis-)education I annually pay thousands in property taxes? Scott Walker would probably understand.

In Texas, I happily employed dozens of Mexican, Central American and Cuban adults at minimum wage to do such work, and I was able to find them in every Home Depot parking lot in the early morning. Kenosha, WI apparently does not offer that option; here, however, the kids have an opportunity to earn some needed money without competition from the undocumented Latinos, if their parents and the gummint would just get out of the way. One hopes that Donald Trump might help change this sad situation; Hillary appears to offer no hope, in any case.

"The Student Prince" (Romberg) is actually quite an excellent operetta, as these things go. Love doesn't conquer all, and the troubles of the protagonists, including the Prince, don't amount to a hill of beans.Very adult really. Not a lesson that US college life wants to teach.

The 'Serenade' from The Student Prince is one of my favorites. Probably because I saw a production when very young and fell head over heels in love with the starring tenor. I believe his name was John Keston.

No, Amerikan men are just living in the wrong country. Amerika is NOT "humanity" in most any sense. When I taught in a German gymnasium, the young boy and girl students often invited me and my girlfriend to go skinny-dipping with them. They could drink in public and marry at 14 and all of us were sexually experienced, meaning that we didn't any of us breed or spread serious diseases such as Amerikan Puritan uptightness.

As much as I loath the Obama's I am surprised that a story would appear, in this day & age, pointing out where their daughter worked. It would seem to me to just put a target on her back. why not let her work the summer and be done with it. No stories in the WAPO, etc. It just seems stupid.

There's plenty of illegals working in Wisconsin. You just ask your neighbors for a name or else advertise on a community bulletin board and take the cheapest one. That will be the Hispanic. Because they accept the lowest wages, Hispanics are pretty much replacing blacks in labor intensive jobs which is why the black unemployment rate is so high. So once you stop expecting an an open-air job mart I think you will be able to find a cheap labor source for yourself among these foreign workers.

That women are doing well is not a bad thing, if you have a daughter. My sons have also done well. A lot of the problems some boys/men face are self inflicted. Some, the disappearance of well paying manufacturing jobs, were created by a series of decisions made by our politicians and plutocrats. I strongly oppose(d) those decisions because a society that outsources most of its manufacturing is losing an enormous part of the skill set that made us a successful society. That is not the fault of women, who have generally had very little political power and even less financial power.

imbino, you are lucky you still have your balls. In this world, spending time with a 12-yo girl alone is unwise. Without explicit parental permission? Suicidal.

Not just in "this world," I think. When I was 12 it was the late 50's, a time when kids were afforded considerably more freedom of movement and independence than today. But I doubt sincerely my parents would have allowed me to work for an adult, single man in his home.

Don't worry they'll never go away. Every issue facing President Trump will be framed through what a President Obama would do, with video. Mooch will never go away, like a stray cat once fed. The girls, in and out of college, fake jobs and fake careers, a stint in rehab, maybe some Marxist nonsense, none of them will ever go away. God help us.